Peachy Jam

My peachy week continues with making a batch of peach jam for this season.  What do you do to make a 1/2 bushel of peaches disappear?  Needless to say, we have done a pretty good job of eating them  But let me recapture the jam making.  Here it goes:

Ingredients
6 lbs peaches, that is about 3 kilograms
1 lemon
4 cups of granulated sugar
A scant 3/4 cup of water
1 large stick of cinnamon (optional)

To peel the peaches, I thinly scored the peaches from one end to the other.  Then I made two scores around the peach which gave me nice bits of peaches for making the jam.  I put the peaches in my large enameled jam pot.

I cut the lemon in half, squeezed the lemon juice over the peaches and cut up the lemon in strips and added that to the pot as well.  I measured out 4 cups of sugar ( about 8 dl) and 3/4 cups of water and also added that to the pot.

I fired up the cook stove and let the peaches come to a boil and turned it down to a gentle simmer, stirring often.  You do not want this jam to burn.  The jam simmered for a long, long time until it started to thicken and jelling.  The long cooking time was due to no artificial pectin in this batch.

The test of doneness:  Dip out a spoonful of jam onto a small cold plate.  If it does not run, the jam is ready.

I finally poured the jam into an assortment of clean jars, poured hot wax on top to seal the good stuff in and the bad stuff out.  I put the tops on, wiped the jars, and put them into the cupboard.  (I should have labeled the jars.)  Until next year. . .

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